Cultural differences
In order to respect the tradition of India, Union Carbide should have done an investigation of Indian cultural values (Robertson and Fadil, 1998). It is possible that firms even within the same industry develop different values and traditions and the analysis of cultural differences permit to decrease the number of misunderstanding (Donaldson, 1989).
One of the most important traits of Indian culture is the fatalism. The Indian population is very spiritual with the notions of karma, fate or destiny. According to them, everything happen for a reason and this way of thinking is significant in decision making in their personal life or within an organisation (Elder, 1966). Fatalism has an impact on two Hofstede’s dimensions.
Power distance is defined as a degree of inequality among people of the community (Thomas, 2008). Hofstede (2009) found that India is a country with a high power distance which means that they accept unequal power and wealth. Indians think that people on the top were destined to be on the top so they accepted their decisions due to the fatalism philosophy. However, the power distance in United States is relatively low (Hofstede, 2009).
Uncertainty avoidance represents the extent to which people are frustrated by unstructured and unpredictable situations (Thomas, 2008). India has low uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 2009). In fact, they prefer few rules as possible and less structures activities. In addition, they are not scared of the unknown and want to take risks. Fatalism emphasises the belief that people do not have the control of every situations (Elder, 1966). United States is also low in uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 2009).
According to Hofstede research, both India and the U.S are masculine which means that the society accepts values like assertiveness, performance, success and competition (Thomas, 2008).
Individualism/ collectivism is defined as the degree to which people in a country